Assembly decoding help?

[Tim Chevalier]

On 3/4/08, Justin Bailey <jgbailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm trying to get a feel for the assembly output by GHC on my
>  platform. Below is a module containing one function and the associated
>  assembly. I've put in comments what I think is going on, but I'd
>  appreciate it if anyone could give me some pointers. I'd really like
>  to know three things:
>
>   * Why does _Add_unsafeShiftR_info check if (%esi) is 3?
>   * What's going on in _s86_info?
>   * At the end of _s87_info, 8 is added to %ebp and then jumped to. Is
>  that a jump to the I# constructor and, if so, how did it's address get
>  to that offset from %ebp?
>

I agree with Stefan's advice: read the STG code, especially to answer
the second two questions (-ddump-stg), and read the STG paper (if you
haven't already):

Implementing lazy functional languages on stock hardware: the
Spineless Tagless G-machine, SL Peyton Jones, Journal of Functional
Programming 2(2), Apr 1992, pp127-202.

Then if anything's still not clear, ask on the mailing list.

Cheers,
Tim

-- 
Tim Chevalier * http://cs.pdx.edu/~tjc * Often in error, never in doubt
"The future is not google-able." -- William Gibson